Baron Cohen - Autism In Adults Flashcards
Aim 1
To develop an advanced test for theory of mind in adults with Autism
Aim 2
To investigate why adults with autistic spectrum disorders have problems with social relationships
Research method and design
Quasi experiment using matched pairs design / independent measures design
Sampling numbers
50 normal, 16 Autistic and 10 Tourette’s syndrome
Sampling method
Volunteer sample - recruited through an advert
Independent variable
If the participant was normal, autistic or had Tourette’s
Dependent variable
How well they performed on the eye task
How many photos of eyes were shown and for how long?
25 photos for 3 seconds each
In what form did they give their answers?
Choosing one of the two forced choice answers which were the opposites of each other
How were the foils and target words generated?
Using 8 adults to construct them and they agreed on them 100%
Why was the Happes Strange Stories used?
To validate the eye task as a theory of mind task- if the eye task truly measured the theory of mind, the performance between these two tasks would correlate
What was found in the Strange Stories tasks?
People with autism spectrum disorder struggles but the normal and Tourette’s group didn’t
Why was the basic emotion recognition task used?
Control: To make sure all the groups didn’t have visual impairments that meant they couldn’t process the photos
Findings from the basic emotion recognition task?
All groups performed normally
Why was the gender recognition task used?
Control: To eliminate the possibility that the autistic group had no visual impairments that disabled them to process the photos
What was found in the gender recognition task?
All groups performed normally
Why was the Eye task used?
To make another test that measured theory of mind, but this time in adults because the Sally Anne test was designed for children, not reflecting adultery abilities
What was found in the eye task?
Participants with Autism performed the worse out of the three groups, proving that autistic people find it hard to recognise the mental state of others
Conclusion 1
Even high functioning adults with autism struggle with the theory of mind
Conclusion 2
It supports that theory of mind deficit is central to understanding autism and the people it’s affected
Conclusion 3
It’s a cold test for theory of mind because the results in the eye task correlated with the ones from Happes Strange Stories
